Plums: An underrated fruit?

I'm planting plums this year! I plan to put four 5-6ft plum trees in close formation, 12 or so feet apart between two speckles alders. One Elmore gold, one toka, and two black ice. We've been eating plums and plum jam this year to confirm that we want all these plums in our future. Very excited for plums when they start producing in a couple years!

Alan,

For anybody planting plum hybrids I recommend this informative article:

Hybrid plums study

I’m in the south sound area of the Pacific Northwest. I’ve had Brooks plums in my garden for about 30 years, they do amazingly well in our climate. They are an offshoot of the iltalian prune, but are 4 times the size and amazingly sweet with a honey like flavor. They are great right off the tree, dried or canned. I’ve made fruit roll ups out of them for years. My wife started making pies out of them, absolutely incredible, theflesh stays light colored and firm like a peach.
If you plant a 5’ tree it will start producing in about 3 years. It start fruiting heavier after about 5 years and the flavor will improve as it gets older.
Self pollinating. And you’ll havta keep an eye on your neighbors, but we get so many I don’t mind if they help themselves!

I think it is time to admit that I have never had a 'good' plum before. This is heartening to hear that there in fact are better things besides a sad grocery store plum.

I planted a Ruby Queen, a Satsuma, and two Chickasaws this winter. This is probably not a popular opinion, but I love the tart flavor of fresh Chickasaws. They make you pucker!

I am curious about plum pies.
Even commercially grown plums seem like they might produce a lot of juice when cooked.
Is there a special way to cook plum pies that keeps the juices  from ruining the crust?

Timothy Norton wrote:I think it is time to admit that I have never had a 'good' plum before. This is heartening to hear that there in fact are better things besides a sad grocery store plum.

I am excited for you to someday have the experience of tree ripe perfection. 😊 Especially when they are warm from the sun and perfectly ripe and the juice just explodes when you bite into the skin and it oozes everywhere in a glorious sticky mess.

William Bronson wrote:I am curious about plum pies.
Even commercially grown plums seem like they might produce a lot of juice when cooked.
Is there a special way to cook plum pies that keeps the juices  from ruining the crust?

I've never made a plum pie but I have had varieties that are drier. Maybe if it was a precooked filling, it would be thickened up?

William Bronson wrote:I am curious about plum pies.
Even commercially grown plums seem like they might produce a lot of juice when cooked.
Is there a special way to cook plum pies that keeps the juices  from ruining the crust?

Salut,

Plum and peach stones find their way all over the place here as do acorns with trees springing up whilst you turn your back.
Most of the plums fruit as a purple oblong type that make a fabulous plum paste, central european ‘powidla’, reduced carefully, lots of stirring, without adding any sugar until the very end if needed.

There are also very red round wild plums that explode juice as one contributor described, much loved by wasps and blackbirds. If there are any left to harvest, they make a wonderfully tart juice.

A few wild yellow plums dehydrated to make fruit leather, great as a snack avoiding shop bought commercial stuff with iffy ingredients. Or just any dried plums.

Luscious chutneys thrown together with onion, spices, vinegar, dates and raisins to add sweetness, slowly reduced to make a welcome condiment.

So pies, hmmm, juice, yes, not baked many recently preferring the open variety, tarts, with interesting patterns in how the fruit is disposed. Some juice will evaporate during baking.
If it seems particularly juicy, I’ll add ground nuts, say almond or hazel, to soak up the juice.
I used to bake upside down cakes- filling at the bottom - with pastry covering the top.
A French version is the tarte tatin baked with apples.
And yes, the deliciousness is turned out or over for serving, fruit on top.

Apologies for not suggesting any specific recipes or links, not my forte as yet.

An alternative to pie or tart could be a plum crumble. I have avoided wheat flour where possible so the crumble topping is a mix of ground nuts and oats, no added sugar or butter with a possible dusting of icing sugar(the powdery variety) at the end or a drizzle of honey.
The oats take up most of the available juice.

There are jars of plum compote, cooked plums resting in their own juices. Must remember to use labels, occasionally.

The grafted plums haven’t fared too well in recent years of drought in spite of care.
I am partial to reine claude and greengages; plans are afoot to reintroduce these.

Thank you for the usual inspiration and reminders and bon appetit for when the time is ripe,
Plummy blessings,
M-H

I have 2 Santa Rosa plums that I cloned… onto their own roots… from micro twigs that were 4” tall. Actually had a 100% success rate cloning them in the old Aquaponics systems… and gave all the others away.

Anyways, they are in brick-like clay and thriving on their own roots!

I pruned them back heavily a few months ago and they are now doing their first bloom here on year 3. I like how they form fruiting spurs.

So far, I am impressed. If the fruit works out well, I will begin cloning them in bulk and selling them on their own roots.

The flowers smell amazing!!!